V. I.
Lenin

The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the Russian Revolution[14]

AUTOABSTRACT

Published:
Published in August 1908 in the journal Przeglad Socialdemokratyczny, No. 6; Signed: N. Lenin.
Published according to the text in the journal. Translated from the Polish.
Source:Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1973,
Moscow,
Volume 15,
pages 158-181.
Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2004).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
• README

In response to the request of the Polish comrades, I will
try briefly to set forth here the contents of my book bearing the above
title which was written in November 1907, but which has not yet appeared
for reasons not under my
control.[1]

In the first chapter of this book I examine the “economic basis and
nature of the agrarian revolution in Russia”. Comparing the latest data
about landownership in Russia (1905 figures) and defining in round figures
the land area in all the fifty gubernias of European Russia at 280 million
dessiatines, I arrive at the following picture of the distribution of all
landed property, both allotment land and privately-owned:

Number of holdings

Total area in dessiatines (millions)

Average dessiatines per holding

(a) Ruined peasantry crushed by feudal exploitation

10.5

75.0

7.0

(b) Middle peasantry

1.0

15.0

15.0

(c) Peasant bourgeoisie and capitalist landownership

1.5

70.0

46.7

(d) Feudal latifundia

0.03

70.0

2,333.0

Total

13.03

230.0

17.6

Unclassified holdings

—

50.0

—

Grand Total

13.03

280.0

21.4

Anyone at all familiar with social statistics will under stand that
this picture can be only approximately accurate. For us, however, what is
important is not the details, in which economists of the liberal-Narodnik
trend usually flounder themselves and submerge the essence of the question,
but the class content of the process. My picture brings out this content,
showing what the struggle in the Russian revolution is about. Thirty
thousand landowners—mainly the nobility, but also the state—possess 70
million dessiatines of land. This basic fact should be regarded in the
light of another fact: 10 1/2 million peasant households and smallest
proprietors possess 75 million dessiatines.

This second group could double their possessions . at the
expense of the first: such is the objectively inevitable tendency
of the struggle, irrespective of the various views about it held by various
classes.

The economic essence of the agrarian crisis emerges from this picture
quite clearly. Millions of petty, ruined, impoverished peasants, oppressed
by poverty, ignorance and the survivals of feudalism, cannot live
otherwise than in semi-feudal dependence on the landlord, tilling his land
with their own agricultural implements in exchange for pasturage,
commonage, watering-places, for “land” in general, loans in the winter,
etc., etc. On the other hand, the owners of vast latifundia cannot
in such conditions manage otherwise than with the help of the labour of
their ruined local peasants, since that kind of management does not require
any investment of capital or new systems of cultivation. There necessarily
arises what has been described many. times in Russian economic literature
as the labour-service system of economy. This system is merely the
further development of serfdom. The basis of exploitation is not the
separation of the worker from the land, but the compulsory attachment of
the ruined peasant to it; not the proprietor’s capital but his land; not
the implements belonging to the owner of latifundia, but the age-old wooden
plough of the peasant; not the progress of agriculture but ancient,
centuries-old routine; not “freely hired labour”, but enslavement to the
money-lender.

The results of this state of affairs in the sphere of agriculture
may be expressed in the following figures. Harvest yield on allotment land
is 54 poods per dessiatine; on land lord’s land, with sowing in separate
farms, and worked at the expense of the landlord, using his implements and
employing hired labour, it is 66 poods; on the same landlord’s land under
the métayer system it is 50 poods; and, finally, on land rented by
the peasants from the landlord it is 45 poods. Thus landlords’ lands worked
on a feudalist-money-lending basis (the above-mentioned
métayer and renting by. the peasantry) produce worse yields than the
exhausted and qualitatively worse allotment lands. This falling into bond
age, consolidated by the feudally-run latifundia, is becoming the
main obstacle to the development of Russia’s productive forces.

Another thing that emerges from the picture drawn above is that this
development in a capitalist country may take place in two
different ways. Either the latifundia remain, and gradually become the
basis of capitalist economy on the land. This is the Prussian type of
agrarian capitalism, in which the Junker is master of the situation. For
whole decades there continue both his political domination and the
oppression, degradation, poverty and illiteracy of the peas ant. The
productive forces develop very slowly, as they did in Russian agriculture
between 1861 and 1905.

Or else the revolution sweeps away the landed estates. The basis of
capitalist agriculture now becomes the free farmer on free land,
i. e., land clear of all medieval junk. This is the American type
of agrarian capitalism, and the most rapid development of productive
forces under conditions which are more favourable for the mass of the
people than any others under capitalism.

Inreality the struggle going on in the Russian revolution is
not about “socialisation” and other absurdities of the Narodniks—this
is merely petty-bourgeois’ ideology, petty- bourgeois phrase-mongering and
nothing more—but about what road capitalist development of
Russia will take: the “Prussian” or the “American”. Without
ascertaining this economic basis of the revolution, it is
absolutely impossible to understand anything about an agrarian
programme (as Maslov has not understood it, because he examines the
abstractly desirable, without ascertaining the economically inevitable).

Shortage of space prevents me from setting forth the rest of the first
chapter: I will sum up in a few words. All the Cadets do their utmost to
obscure the essence of the agrarian revolution, while the Prokopoviches
help them in this. The Cadets mix up ("reconcile”) the two
main types of agrarian programme in the revolution—the landlord
and the peasant types. Then (also in a few words): in Russia both types of
capitalist agrarian evolution already made their appearance in the years
between 1861 and 1905—both the Prussian (the gradual development
of landlord economy in the direction of capitalism) and the American
(differentiation of the peasantry and a rapid development of productive
forces in the more free South, with its abundance of land). Finally, there
is the question of colonisation which I deal with in this chapter, and
which I shall not be able to dwell on here. I will only mention that the
main obstacle in Russia to putting into use hundreds of millions
of dessiatines is the feudal latifundia persisting in Central
Russia. Victory over these landlords will give such a powerful impetus to
the development of technique and scientific cultivation that the area of
arable land will increase ten times faster than it did after 1861. Here are
a few figures. Out of the total area throughout the Russian . Empire—I
,965 million dessiatines—there is no information whatever about
819 million dessiatines. Thus, only 1,146 million dessiatines are available
for consideration—of which 469 million dessiatines are in use, but they
include 300 million dessiatines of forest. A vast amount of land that is
not fit for anything now will become useful in the immediate future
if Russia frees herself from the
latifundia.[2]

Chapter II of my book is devoted to the testing of the agrarian
programmes of the R.S.D.L.P. by the revolution. The principal error of all
previous programmes has been an
insufficiently concrete idea of what the type of capitalist
agrarian revolution in Russia can be. And this mistake was repeated by the
Mensheviks, who were victorious at the Stockholm Congress, and gave the
Party a programme of municipalisation. It was precisely the
economic aspect of the question—the most important aspect—that
at Stockholm was not examined at all. Instead, it was
“political” considerations, the manoeuvres of politicians and not Marxist
analysis, that prevailed. An explanation of this can only
partially be found in the actual moment when the Stockholm
Congress met, when the assessment of December 1905 and the First Duma of
1906 claimed all the attention of the Congress. That was why Plekhanov, who
at Stockholm carried Maslov’s plan for municipalisation, gave no
thought at all to the economic content of a “peasant agrarian
revolution” (Minutes of the Stockholm Congress, p. 42, the words of
Plekhanov) in a capitalist country. Either this was a mere phrase, and
“capturing” the peasants by means of demagogy and deception
(“Bauernfang”) unworthy of a Marxist; or there exists the
economic possibility of the most rapid development of capitalism
through the victory of the peasantry. And in that case it is
essential clearly to realise the kind of victory, the kind of path of
agrarian capitalism, the kind of system of relations in landownership,
which correspond to that victory of the “peasant agrarian revolution”.

The main argument of the most influential “municipalisers” in
Stockholm was based on the assertion that the peasants are hostile
to the nationalisation of the allotment lands.
John,[15] who was reporting for the supporters of
municipalisation, exclaimed: “We would have not one
Vendée,[16] but a general revolt of the peasantry [how terrible! I
against attempts by the state to interfere with the peasants’ own
allotments, against attempts to ‘nationalise’ the latter” (Minutes of the
Stockholm Congress, p. 40).
Kostrov[17] exclaimed: “To go to the peasants with it [nationalisation]
means antagonising them. The peasant movement will go on apart from or
against us, and we shall find ourselves thrown overboard in the
revolution. Nationalisation deprives Social-Democracy of its strength,
isolates it from the peasantry and thus also deprives the revolution of its
strength” (p. 88).

That is clear, it would seem. The peasants are hostile to
nationalisation: this is the main argument of the Mensheviks. And if
this is true, is it not obvious that it is ridiculous to carry out “a
peasant agrarian revolution” against the will of the peasants?

But is it true? In 1905 P. Maslov wrote: “Nationalisation of the land
as a means of solving the agrarian problem in Russia at the present time
cannot be accepted, first of all [note this “first of all"] because it is
hopelessly utopian.... But will the peasants ... agree?” (P. Maslov, A
Critique of Agrarian Programmes, 1905, p. 20.)

Butin March 1907: “All the Narodnik groups [the Trudoviks,
the Popular Socialists, and the Socialist-Revolutionaries] are advocating
nationalisation of the land in one form or another” (the journal
Obrazovaniye,[18] 1907, No. 3, p. 100). And who wrote this?
That same P. Maslov!

There’s your new Vend6e! There’s your revolt of the peasantry against
nationalisation! And instead of honestly admitting his mistake, instead of
making an economic study of the reason why the peasants should
declare in favour of nationalisation, Maslov acted like Ivan the
Forgetful. He preferred to forget his own words and all the
speeches at the Stockholm Congress.

Not only that. In order to cover up the traces of this “unpleasant
occurrence”, Maslov invented the fable that the Trudoviks had declared for
nationalisation for petty-bourgeois reasons, “placing their hopes in
the central authority” (ibid.). The following comparison shows that
this is a fable. The agrarian Bill moved by the Trudoviks in both the
First and the Second Dumas says in Clause 16: “The
management of the national lands must be entrusted to local self-governing
bodies elected by universal, equal, and direct suffrage by secret ballot,
which shall act independently within the limits laid down by the law.”

The agrarian programme of.the R.S.D.L.P., carried by the Mensheviks,
proclaims that the R.S.D.L.P. demands... "(4) the confiscation of
privately-owned lands, except small holdings, which shall be placed at the
disposal of large local self-governing bodies (comprising urban and rural
districts, as per Point 3) to be elected on democratic principles”.
The essential difference between these programmes is not in the words
“management” and
“disposal”,[3]
but on the question of purchase (which at the Stockholm Congress was
rejected by Bolshevik votes against Dan and Co. and which the
Mensheviks again tried to drag in after the Congress) and on the question
of the peasant lands. The Mensheviks separate them, the Trudoviks
do not. The Trudoviks have demonstrated to the municipalisers that I
was right.

There can be no doubt that the programme of the Trudoviks brought
forward in the First and Second Dumas is the programme of the peasant
masses. The literature of the peas ant deputies, their signatures to the
Bills and the gubernias they come from, all prove this quite
convincingly. In 1905 Maslov wrote that the homestead peasants “in
particular” could not agree to nationalisation (p. 20 of the pamphlet I
have already quoted). This turned out to be “particular”
nonsense. In Podolsk Gubernia, for example, the peasants are homesteaders,
yet 13 Podolsk peasants in the First Duma, and 10 in the Second, signed the
Land Bill of the "104” (the Trudovik Bill quoted above).

Why, then, did the peasants declare for nationalisation? Because they
instinctively realised the necessity of abolishing all medieval
forms of landed property much better than did short-sighted so-called
Marxists. Medieval landed property must be abolished in order to
clear the way for capitalism in agriculture; and in various countries and
to various degrees capital has abolished the old medieval
landownership, subordinating it to the requirements of the market and
transforming it in keeping with the conditions of commercial
agriculture. Marx already pointed out in the third volume of
Capital that the capitalist mode of production finds
landed property in historical forms incompatible with capitalism (clan
ownership, communal, feudal, patriarchal, etc., ownership) and re-creates
them in keeping with the new economic
demands.[19]

In the paragraph, “The historical conditions of Ricardo’s theory of
rent”, in his Theories of
Surplus-Value[4]
Marx
developed this conception with the clarity of genius. He wrote: “Nowhere
in the world has capitalist production, since Henry VII, dealt so
ruthlessly with the traditional relations of agriculture and so adequately
moulded its conditions and made them subject to itself. England is in this
respect the most revolutionary country in the world.... But what does this
‘clearing of
estates’[5]
mean? It means that without regard for the local population—which is
driven away, for existing villages—which are levelled to the ground, for
farm buildings—which are torn down, for the kind of agriculture—which
is transformed at a stroke, being converted, for example, from tillage to
pasture, all conditions of production, instead of being accepted as they
are handed down, by tradition, are historically fashioned in the
form necessary under the circumstances for the most profitable investment
of capital. To that extent, therefore, no landed properly exists;
it allows capital—the farmer—to manage freely, since it is only
concerned about the money income” (pp. 6–7).

Such are the conditions for the speediest possible abolition of forms
inherited from the Middle Ages and for the freest possible development of
capitalism—the abolition of all the old system of landowning,
the abolition of private property in land, as an obstacle to capital. In
Russia, too, such a revolutionary “clearing” of the medieval
landowning system is inevitable, and no power on earth can stave
it off. The question is only, and the struggle is
solely, about whether this “clearing” will be done by
the. landlords or by the peas ants. The “clearing” of
medieval land owning by the landlords is. the robbery of the peasants that
took place in 1861 and the Stolypin agrarian reform of 1906 (legislation
under Article 87). The peasant “clearing” of lands for
capitalism is nationalisation of the land.

It is this economic substance of nationalisation in a
bourgeois revolution carried out by. workers and peasants, which
Maslov, Plekhanov and Co. have completely failed to understand. They drew
up their agrarian programme not for a struggle against medieval landowning
’as one of the most important survivals of serfdom, not to clear the way
completely for capitalism, but for a pitiful philistine attempt to
combine “harmoniously” the old with the new, landed property which arose
as a result of the system of allotment and the latifundia of the feudalists
confiscated by the revolution.

In order, finally, to demonstrate all the reactionary philistine
character of the idea of municipalisation, I quote data about the
leasing of land. (I pointed out the importance of the question of leasehold
in my dispute with Maslov in 1906 in my pamphlet, Revision of the
Agrarian Programme of the Workers’
Party.[6]
)
in Kamyshin Uyezd of Saratov
Gubernia[7]
:

Groups of householders

Dessiatines per household

Allotment land

Rented land

Leased land

Total crop area

With no draught animals. . .

5.4

0.3

3.0

1.1

” 1 animal . . .

6.5

1.6

1.3

5.0

” 2 animals . . .

8.5

3.5

0.9

8.8

” 3 ” ” . .

10.1

5.6

0.8

12.1

” 4 ” ” . .

12.5

7.4

0.7

15.8

” 5 draught animals and more . .

16.1

16.6

0.9

27.6

Average

9.3

5.4

1.5

10.8

Take a look at the real economic relationship between
allotment land, which the most sage Maslov and Plekhanov leave to
the peasants as their property, and the non-allotment land (rented
land) which they “municipalised”. The horseless peasants—and in
1896-1900 there were in all 3 1/2 million such households out of 11.1
million—lease ten times more land than they rent
themselves. Their area under crops is five times less than their
“allotments”. Among the peasants owning one horse (3.3 million households
in all Russia) the amount of rented land scarcely exceeds the
amount of land which they lease, and their crop area is less
than their “allotment”. In all the higher groups, i. e., among the
minority of the peasants, the land they rent is several times larger than
the land they lease, and the wealthier the peasants
the more does their crop area exceed the size of their “allotment”.

Relations like this prevail throughout Russia. Capitalism is
destroying the agricultural commune; it is liberating the peasants
from the yoke of the “allotment”; it is diminishing the role of the
allotment lands at both poles in the country side—yet the profound
Menshevik thinkers exclaim: “The peasants will revolt against
nationalisation of the allotment lands."

It is not only landlord property that dates from the Middle Ages in
Russia, but also the peasants’ allotment property— a thing the Mensheviks
have “overlooked”. The reinforcement of allotment property, which is
completely at variance with the new capitalist relations, is a
reactionary measure, and municipalisation reinforces allotment
property as distinct from non-allotment property, which is “subject to
municipalisation”. Allotment land ownership divides the peasants with a
thousand medieval barriers, and through the medieval fiscal “village
commune”, retards the development of productive forces. The “village
commune” and this allotment ownership are bound to be destroyed by
capitalism. Stolypin realises this, and destroys them the Black-Hundred
way. The peasants feel it, and want to destroy them in the peasant, or
revolutionary-democratic way. And the Mensheviks exclaim: “You mustn’t
touch the allotment lands."

Nationalisation abolishes the obsolete “village commune” and the
medieval allotted property as completely as it is conceivably possible for
these institutions to be abolished in capitalist society while observing
the best interests of the peasant. In the booklet, Material on the
Peasant Question (A Report of the Delegates’ Congress of the
All-Russian Peasant Union, November 6-10, 1905), published in
St. Petersburg in 1905, we read: “The notorious question of the ’village
commune’ was not raised at all and was tacitly rejected: the land must be
placed at the disposal of individuals and associations, state the
resolutions passed at both the First and Second Congresses” (p. 12). To
the question, whether the peasants themselves would suffer as a result of
nationalisation of the allotment lands, the delegates replied:
“They will get land in any case when it is distributed” (p. 20). The
peasant proprietor (and his ideologist Mr.
Peshekhonov) understands perfectly well that “they will get land in any
case when it is distributed” and that soon the feudal latifundia will be
abolished. He needs “redistribution” on a vast scale, which means the
nationalisation of all lands, in order to shake himself free from the toils
of the Middle Ages, in order to “clear” the land, in order that its
utilisation should be brought into line with the new economic
conditions. This was well expressed in the Second Duma by Mr. Mushenko
when, speaking on behalf of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, he said, with
his native simplicity:
“The population [farmers] will be properly, distributed only when the land
is unfenced, only when the fences imposed by the principle of private
ownership of land are removed” (Minutes of the Second Duma,
p. 1172). Compare this statement with the words of Marx quoted earlier, and
you will realise that the philistine phrases about “socialisation” and
“equalisation” conceal, a very real content: the bourgeois revolutionary
clearing of the old medieval system of landed property.

The municipalisation of lands in the bourgeois revolution is a
reactionary measure, because it hinders the economically necessary
and inevitable process of abolishing medieval landed property, the process
of establishing uniformity of economic conditions on the land for
all proprietors,, whatever their condition, their past, their
allotment in 1861, etc. The division of land into private property now
would be reactionary, because it would preserve the present, out-
of-date and obsolete allotment ownership; but eventually, after the land
will have been completely cleared by means of nationalisation, division
would be possible as the slogan of a new and free farming
class.[8]
The business of Marxists is to help the radical bourgeoisie (i. e., the
peasantry) to carry out the fullest possible elimination . of old junk and
to ensure the rapid development of capitalism, and not at all to help the
petty bourgeoisie in their striving to come to a comfortable arrangement
and adapt themselves to the past.

Chapter III is devoted to"The Theoretical Basis of Nationalisation and
of Municipalisation”.

Naturally I shall not start repeating to the Polish comrades things
that are commonly known to every Marxist, the fact that nationalisation of
the land in capitalist society means abolishing absolute, and not
differential rent, etc. But having in mind my Russian readers, I was
obliged to write of this in detail, because Pyotr Maslov was asserting
that Karl Marx’s theory of absolute rent is a “contradiction” which “one
can only account for [!!I by the fact that Volume III is a posthumous
publication containing also the rough notes of t.he author” (The
Agrarian
Question).[9]

This pretension on the part of Pyotr Maslov, who desires to correct
Karl Marx’s rough notes, is not anything new for me. In the journal
Zarya[20] as early as 1901, I pointed out that Maslov in
Zhizn[21] had distorted Marx’s theory of
rent.[10]
Soon afterwards, however, Pyotr Maslov repeated this presumptuous and
. unquestionable nonsense in 1906 (the preface to the 3rd edition is dated
April 26, 1906) after the publication of the Theories of
Surplus-Value, where Marx explained the theory of absolute rent with
complete clarity. Here Maslov surpassed himself! As I am unable to repeat
here the detailed. analysis of Pyotr Maslov’s “corrections” to Marx given
in my book, I will confine myself only to the observation that these
corrections turn out to be the hackneyed arguments of bourgeois political
economy. Pyotr Maslov goes as far as to contrast Marx’s theory of absolute
rent to “brickmaking”. (p. 111); he warms up again “the law of
diminishing returns”, affirms .that “without this law it is impossible to
explain ‘trans-Atlantic’ competition” (p. 107) and finally, talks himself
into the assertion that without refuting Marx it is impossible to
refute the views of the Narodniks: “If it were not for the ‘fact’
that the productivity of successive expenditures of labour on the same plot
of land diminishes, the idyll which. the ... Narodniks depict could,
perhaps, be realised.” .(Maslov in the journal Obrazovaniye,
1907, No.2, p.. 123.) In a word, Pyotr Maslov’s economic theory does
not contain one single new idea on the question of
absolute rent, on the “fact” of diminishing returns, on the principal
mistakes of “Narodism”, on the difference between the improvement of
cultivation and the improvement of technique. Having refuted the theory of
absolute rent by purely bourgeois arguments worked to death by the official
defenders of capitalism, Maslov was bound to land in the ranks of the
distorters of Marxism. But while distorting Marxism, Pyotr Maslov was
clever enough to omit all his corrections to Marx’s rough notes
from the German translation of his book on The Agrarian
Question. Faced with Europeans, Maslov hid his theory in his
pocket! As I wrote in Chapter III, I could not help recalling in this
connection the story about a stranger who was present for the first time at
a discussion between ancient philosophers but remained silent all the
time. One of the philosophers said to the stranger: “If you are wise, you
are behaving foolishly; if you are a fool, you are behaving wisely."

Naturally, to repudiate the theory of absolute rent is to deprive
oneself of any chance of understanding the significance of the
nationalisation of land in capitalist society, because nationalisation can
lead to the abolition only of absolute, and not differential, rent. To
repudiate absolute rent is to repudiate the economic significance of
private land- owning as an obstacle to the development of
capitalism. Thanks to this, Maslov and Co. inevitably reduce the question
of nationalisation or municipalisation to a political issue ("who
should get the land?”) and ignore the economic essence of the
question. The combination of private owner ship of allotment land (i. e.,
of inferior land owned by inferior proprietors) with public ownership of
the remaining (superior) part of the land becomes an absurdity in
any at all developed and free capitalist state. It is nothing more or less
than agrarian bimetallism.

As a result of this error of the Mensheviks, it transpires that the
Social-Democrats have handed over criticism of private ownership of the
land to the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Marx gave an admirable example of
such criticism in
Capital.[11]
But with us it appears that the Social-Democrats
do not conduct that criticism from the point of view of the development of
capitalism, and all that reaches the masses is criticism by the Narodniks,
i. e., a distorted philistine criticism of private property in land.

I will mention as a detail that the following argument has also been
used against nationalisation in Russian literature: it would mean “money
rent” for small peasant property. That is not so. “Money rent” (see
Capital, .Vol.
III)[22] is a modern form of interest for the landlord. In
present-day peasant leasehold, payment for land is undoubtedly
money rent to a certain degree. The abolition of the feudal
latifundia will hasten the differentiation of the peasantry and strengthen
the peasant bourgeoisie, which is already carrying out capitalist renting
of land (recall the data quoted earlier about renting of land among the
higher groups of the peasantry).

Finally, it should be said that the view is fairly wide spread among
Marxists that nationalisation is practicable only at a very high stage of
development of capitalism. That is incorrect. It would then be a question
not of a bourgeois but of a socialist revolution. Nationalisation of the
land is the most consistent bourgeois measure. Marx repeatedly
affirmed this, from The Poverty of
Philosophy[23] onwards. In his Theories of Surplus-Value
Marx says (II. Band, I. Teil, S. 208): “In theory the radical bourgeois
arrives at the repudiation of private landed property.... In practice,
however, he lacks courage, since the at.tack on one form of property,
private property in relation to the conditions of labour, would be very
dangerous for the other form. Moreover, the bourgeois has territorialised
himself.” In Russia the bourgeois revolution is taking place in conditions
when there exists a radical bourgeois (the peasant) who “has the courage”
to put forward a programme of nationalisation on behalf of a mass of many
millions, and who has not yet “territorialised himself”, i. e., he
derives more harm from (medieval) private property in land, than
advantage and “profits” from (bourgeois) property in the same land. The
Russian revolution cannot be victorious unless that “radical
bourgeois”, who wavers between the Cadet and the worker, supports the
proletariat in its revolutionary struggle by mass action. The Russian
revolution cannot be victorious except in the form
of a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the
peasantry.

Chapter IV of the book deals with “political and tactical”
considerations in questions of the agrarian programme. First among these is
the “famous” argument of Plekhanov. “The key to my position,” he
exclaimed at Stockholm, “is that I draw attention to the possibility of
restoration” (Minutes, p. 113). But the key is a completely rusty
one—the Cadet key of a deal with reaction under the guise of a
“guarantee against restoration”. Plekhanov’s argument is the most pitiful
piece of sophistry, for while he asserts that there is no guarantee against
restoration, he nevertheless invents such a guarantee. “it
[municipalisation] will not surrender the land to the political
representatives of the old order” (p. 45, Plekhanov’s speech). What is
restoration? The passing of power in the state into the hands of
representatives of the old order. Can there be a guarantee against
restoration? “No, there can be no guarantee” (Minutes, p. 44, Plekhanov’s
speech). Therefore ... he invents a guarantee—“municipalisation will not
surrender the land”.

Under municipalisation there will remain the difference
between allotment and landlords’ lands in the economic sense,
i. e., it will facilitate a restoration, or the recognition of this
difference de jure. In the political sense municipalisation
is a law changing the ownership of landlords’ estates. What is a
law? The expression of the will of the ruling classes. If there is a
restoration, the same classes once again become the
ruling classes. Will they be bound by law, Comrade Plekhanov? If
you gave this any thought, you would under stand that no law can restrict
the expression of the will of the ruling classes. Nationalisation makes
restoration more difficult in the economic sense, because it
destroys all the old barriers, all medieval property in
land, and adapts it to the new uniform capitalist conditions of
production.

Plekhanov’s sophistry is an acceptance of the Cadet tactics of
leading the proletariat not to complete victory but to a deal with
the old authorities. In fact ,the only absolute “guarantee against
restoration” is a socialist revolution in the West, while a relative
guarantee would be to carry the revolution through to its conclusion, to do
away with the old in the most radical fashion, to provide the
greatest
degree of democracy in politics (the republic) arid to clear the ground for
capitalism in the economy.

Another argument of Plekhanov’s runs: “In the shape of local
self-governing bodies which will possess the land, municipalisation will
create a bulwark against reaction. And a very powerful bulwark it will be”
(Minutes, p. 45). This is untrue. Never and nowhere has local
self-government been a bulwark against reaction in the epoch of
capitalism. nor could it be. Capitalism inevitably leads to
centralisation of state power,and every local self-government will
unquestionably be vanquished if the state authority is
reactionary.I Plekhanov is preaching opportunism when he
concentrates attention not on “democracy in the centre”, or a
republic—the only bulwark against reaction conceivable in
capitalist society—but on local self-government, which is always impotent
in relation to great historical tasks, always small-scale, petty,
subordinate and scattered. “A peasant agrarian revolution”
cannot be victorious in Russia unless it defeats the central
authority, but Plekhanov suggests to the Mensheviks views expressed at
Stockholm by the Menshevik Novosedsky: “In the event of truly democratic
local self-government being established, the programme now adopted may be
carried into effect [listen to this!] even with a degree of democratisation
of the central government which cannot be described as the highest degree
of its democratisation. Even under democratisation of a comparative degree,
so to speak, municipalisation will not be harmful, but useful” (Minutes,
p. 138).

Nothing could be more clear. Let us teach the people to adapt itself to
the monarchy: perhaps the latter won’t “notice” our regional activity,
and will “grant us our lives” like Shchedrin’s gudgeon had his
granted. The Third Duma is a good illustration of the possibility of
municipalisation and local democracy, given a “relative”,
Menshevik democracy in the centre.

Then municipalisation makes for federalism and separatism in the
regions. No wonder, in the Second Duma, the Right-wing Cossack
Karaulov denounced nationalisation no less strongly than Plekhanov
(Minutes, p. 1366) and declared for municipalisation by
regions. The Cossack lands in Russia already represent an
example of municipalisation. And it
was just this breaking-up of the state into separate regions that was one
of the causes of the defeat of the revolution in the first three years’
campaign!

Nationalisation—runs the next argument—strengthens the central
authority of the bourgeois state! In the first place, this argument is put
forward with the object of arousing distrust in the Social-Democratic
parties of the various nationalities. “Perhaps, in some places,
the peasants would agree to share -their lands,” wrote P. Maslov in
Obrazovaniye (1907, No. 3, p. 104). “But the refusal of the
peasants in a single large area (for example, Poland) to share their lands
would be enough to make the proposal to nationalise all the land an
absurdity.” A fine argument, to be sure! Should we not give up the idea
of a republic, since “the refusal of the peasants in a single large area
is enough, etc."? It is not an argument but a piece. of
demagogy. Our political programme excludes any violence and
injustice, demanding wide autonomy for the individual provinces (see Clause
3 of the Party programme). Thus, it is not a question of re inventing new
“guarantees” which are unattainable in bourgeois society, but of the
party of the proletariat using its propaganda and agitation to
call for unity and not for dismemberment, to solve the lofty
problems arising in centralised states, and not to sink into rusticity and
national insularity. It is the centre of Russia that solves the agrarian
problem: the borderlands cannot be influenced otherwise than by
example.[12]
This is obvious even to every democrat, let alone every
Social-Democrat. And the question is only whether the proletariat should
raise the peasantry to higher aims, or sink to the
petty-bourgeois level of the peasantry it self.

Secondly, it is asserted that nationalisation will increase the
possibility of arbitrary action at the centre, bureaucracy, etc. As regards
bureaucracy, it should be observed that the management of the land
even under nationalisation will remain in the hands of the local
self-governing bodies. This means that the argument just quoted is
false. The central authority will lay down the general conditions: i. e.,
for
example, it will prohibit any alienation of the land, etc. And does not our
present, i. e., Menshevik, programme hand over to the “democratic state
for disposal” not only the “colonisation lands”, but also “forest and
water areas of national importance"? But it is not wise to hide one’s head
under one’s wing; here, too, unlimited arbitrary action is
possible, since it is the central state authority itself which will deter
mine what forests and waters are of national importance. The
Mensheviks are looking for “guarantees” in the wrong place: only
complete democracy at the centre, only a re public, can reduce the
probability of disputes between the centre and the regions to a minimum.

“The bourgeois state will grow stronger,” cry the Mensheviks, who in
secret support the bourgeois monarchists (the Cadets), and in public beat
their breasts at the very thought of supporting bourgeois republicans. The
genuine historical question which objective historical and social
development is putting to us is: a Prussian or an American type of agrarian
evolution? A landlords’ monarchy with the fig-leaf of a sham constitution,
or a peasant (farmers’) republic? To close our eyes to such an
objective statement of the case by history means to deceive oneself and
others, hiding in philistine fashion from the acute class struggle, from
the acute, simple and decisive presentation of the question of a democratic
revolution.

We cannot get rid of the “bourgeois state”. Only petty- bourgeois
philistines can dream of doing so. Our revolution is a bourgeois revolution
precisely because the struggle going on in it is not between socialism and
capitalism, but between two forms of capitalism, two paths of its
development, two forms of bourgeois-democratic institutions. The monarchy
of the Octobrists or the Cadets is a “relative” bourgeois
“democracy”, from the point of view of the Menshevik Novosedsky. The
proletarian-peasant republic, too, is a bourgeois democracy. In our
revolution we cannot make a single step—and we have not made a
single step—which did not support in one way or another one
section of the bourgeoisie or another against the old order.

If
we are told that nationalisation means using public funds for the army,
while municipalisation means using them for public health and education, it
is sophistry worthy
of a philistine. Yet literally that is how Maslov
argues:. “Nationalisation, i. e., [sic!] the expenditure of
ground-rent on the army and navy ...; municipalisation of the land, i. e.,
the expenditure of rent on the needs of the population”
(Obrazovaniye, 1907, No. 3, p. 103). This is petty-bourgeois
socialism, or the destruction of flies by the use of a powder to be poured
on the flies’ tails when they have been caught! Our good Maslov has not
realised that, if the Zemstvos in Russia and the municipalities in the West
spend more on public health, etc., compared with the state, it is only be
cause the bourgeois state has already carried out its most
important expenditures (to assure the domination of the bourgeoisie as a
class) out of funds coming from the biggest sources of revenue, and has
left the local authorities with secondary sources for the
so-called “needs of the population”. Hundreds of thousands for the army,
a few farthings for the needs of the proletariat—that is the
true relationship of expenditures in the bourgeois state. And one has to be
a Maslov to imagine that it is sufficient to hand over ground-
rent for “disposal” by the municipalities, for the bourgeois state to be
taken in by those subtle “politicians”, the Mensheviks! And really, will
the bourgeois state, thanks to this “most subtle policy”, begin to give
hundreds of thousands to the proletarians and farthings to the army - and
the navy?

In reality, the Mensheviks are pursuing a philistine policy— seeking
refuge in the provincial backwoods of local self- government against having
to solve the burning problem with which we are faced by history, namely,
should our country have a centralised bourgeois republic of farmers, or a
centralised bourgeois monarchy of Junkers? You won’t dodge the-issue,
gentlemen! No provincialism, no playing at municipal socialism, will rescue
you from inevitable participation in the solving of this
acute problem. Your wriggling really means only one thing—secret
support of the Cadet tendency, while failing to understand the importance
of the republican tendency.

The Minutes of the Stockholm Congress are clear evidence of the fact
that the Mensheviks, in defending municipalisation, are flirting with the
Fabian “municipal socialism” existing in Europe. “Some comrades,”
Kostrov said there, “seem to be hearing about municipal ownership for the
first time. Let me remind them that in Western Europe there is a whole
political trend [precisely! Kostrov, without wishing to do so, blurted out
the truth! J called ’municipal socialism’ [England 1” (Minutes,
p. 88). That this “trend” is the trend of extreme
opportunism neither Kostrov nor
Larin[13]
took into consideration. It is quite consistent for the
Socialist-Revolutionaries to drag in petty-bourgeois peddling of reforms as
one of the tasks of the bourgeois revolution, but it is not for the
Social-Democrats to do it, gentle men! The bourgeois intellectuals in the
West (the Fabians in England, the followers of Bernstein in Germany, the
followers of Brousse in France) naturally shift the weight of emphasis from
questions of state structure to questions of local
self-government. But what we are faced with is precisely the
question of the structure of the state, its agrarian basis— and
to defend “municipal socialism” here is to play at agrarian
socialism. Let the petty bourgeoisie hasten to “build themselves a nest”
in the peaceful municipalities of future democratic Russia. The task of the
proletariat is to organise the masses not for this purpose, but for the
revolutionary struggle, for complete democratisation today and a
socialist revolution tomorrow.

We Bolsheviks are often reproached for the utopianism and fantastic
character of our revolutionary views. And these reproaches are heard most
often in connection with nationalisation. But this is where they are least
of all justified. Those who consider nationalisation to be “utopia” do
not think about the necessary balance between political and agrarian
changes. Nationalisation is no less “utopian"— from the point of view of
an ordinary philistine—than a republic. And both are no less utopian than
a “peasant” agrarian revolution, i. e., the victory of a peasant
uprising in a capitalist country. All these changes are equally
“difficult” as far as everyday peaceful development is concerned. And the
outcry about nationalisation, of all things, being utopian, testifies first
of all to failure to understand the essential and unbreakable
connection between an economic
and a political upheaval. Confiscation of the landed estates (a demand in
our programme recognised both by the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks) is
impossible without the abolition of the landlord autocracy (and with it the
Octobrist, not purely landlord, autocracy). And the autocracy cannot be
abolished without the revolutionary action of class- conscious millions,
without a great surge of mass heroism, readiness and ability on their part
to “storm heaven”, as Marx put it when speaking of the Paris workers at
the time of the
Commune.[24] In its turn, this revolutionary surge is unthinkable without
the radical abolition of all the relics of serfdom which for ages
have oppressed the peasantry, including the whole of medieval
property in land, all the shackles of the fiscal “village commune”, the
crumbs of accursed memory “granted” by the government, etc., etc., etc.

Owing to lack of space (I have already gone beyond the length laid down
by the editors of
Przegl&qwhatthe;d[25]) I omit a summary of the fifth
chapter of my book (“Classes and Parties in the Debate on the Agrarian
Question in the Second Duma”).

The speeches of the peasants in the Duma are of tremendous
political importance, because in them were expressed that passionate desire
to get rid of the yoke of the landlords, that fiery hatred of medievalism
and the bureaucracy, that spontaneous, ingenuous, often naive and not quite
definite, but at the same time stormy revolutionary spirit of the
ordinary peasants, which prove better than any long arguments what
potential destructive energy has accumulated within the mass of the
peasantry against the nobility, the landlords and the Romanovs. The task of
the class-conscious proletariat is mercilessly to show up, expose and
eliminate all the numerous petty-bourgeois deceptions, allegedly socialist
phrases, childishly naive expectations which the peasants link with an
agrarian revolution—but to eliminate them not in order to calm and
-pacify the peasants (as the betrayers of the people’s -freedom, the Cadet
gentlemen, did in both Dumas) but in order to awaken among the masses a
steel-like, unshakable and resolute revolutionary spirit. Without that
revolutionary spirit, without a stubborn and merciless struggle of
the peasant masses, all such things
as confiscation, the republic, and universal, direct and equal suffrage by
secret ballot are hopelessly “utopian”. Therefore the Marxists must put
the question clearly and definitely: two direct-ions in the economic
development of Russia, two paths of capitalism, have emerged with absolute
clarity. Let all think well on this. During the first revolutionary
campaign, during the three years 1905-07, both these directions became
clear to us not as theoretical general conclusions, not as lessons to he
drawn from such-and-such features of the evolution which has taken
place since 1861. No, these directions have now become clear t-o us
precisely as the directions mapped out by hostile classes. The
land lords and the capitalists (the Octobrists) are quite clear that there
is no other development except the capitalist one, and that for
them it is impossible to travel that road without compulsory and
speedy destruction of the “village commune that kind of destruction which
is identical with ... open robbery by the money-lender, with “destruction
and plunder” by the police or “punitive” expeditions. It is the kind of
“operation” in which it is extremely easy to break one’s neck! As for the
masses of the peasantry, they discovered for themselves no less clearly
during t-hose same three years that it was hopeless to expect anything from
“Our Father the Tsar”, or to count in any way on a peaceful road, and
that revolutionary struggle was necessary to abolish all medievalism in
general and all medieval property in land in particular.

All the propaganda and agitation of the Social-Democrats should be
based on bringing these results home to the masses, on preparing the masses
to make use of this experience for a resolute and unswerving attack,
organised in the best possible way, during the second campaign of
the revolution.

That is just why Plekhanov’s speeches at Stockholm were so reactionary
when he talked about the seizure of power by the proletariat and the
peasantry meaning the rebirth of “the Narodnaya Volya spirit”. Plekhanov
himself reduced his argument to an absurdity: according to him, there would
take place a “peasant agrarian revolution” without seizure of power by
the proletariat, without seizure of power by the peasantry! On the other
hand, Kautsky—who at the beginning of the break between the Bolsheviks
and the Mensheviks
was patently inclined to favour the latter—has gone over ideologically to
the side of the former, by recognising that only given “the alliance of
the proletariat and the peasantry” is a victory of the revolution
possible.

Without complete, abolition of all medieval property in the land,
without the complete “clearing”, i. e., without nationalisation of the
land, such a revolution is unthinkable. The business of the party of the
proletariat is to spread most widely this watchword of a most consistent
and most radical bourgeois agrarian revolution. And when we have done
that, we shall see what are the further prospects; we shall see
whether such a revolution is only the basis for a development of
productive forces under capitalism at an American speed, or
whether it will become the prologue to a socialist revolution in the West.

July 18, 1908

P.S. I do not repeat here my draft of an agrarian programme, which was
submitted to the Stockholm Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. and which has often
been printed in Social- Democratic literature. I will confine myself merely
to some observations. When two directions for capitalist agrarian evolution
exist, there must necessarily be included in the programme an “if” (the
technical expression used at the Stockholm Congress), i. e., the programme
must take both possibilities into account. In other words, so long as
things are going as they are, we demand freedom of use of the land,
tribunals for lowering rents, abolition of social-estates, etc. At the
same time we fight the present direction and support the revolutionary
demands of the peasantry iii the interests of the speediest possible
development of productive forces and of wide and free scope for the class
struggle. While sup porting the revolutionary struggle of the peasants
against medievalism, the Social-Democratic Labour Party makes it clear that
the best form of agrarian relations in capitalist society (and at the same
time the best form in which survivals of serfdom can be eliminated) is the
nationalisation of the land, that only in connection with a radical
political revolution, the abolition of the autocracy
and the establishment of a democratic republic, is it possible to carry out
a radical agrarian revolution, the confiscation of the landed estates and
the nationalisation of the land.

Such is the content of my draft agrarian programme. The part
which describes the bourgeois features of the whole of the present
agrarian changes, and elucidates the purely proletarian point of view of
Social-Democracy, was adopted at Stockholm and became an
integral part of the present programme.

Notes

[2]The liberal-Narodnik economists argue in this way: in view of
the lack of land in the centre, in view of the unsuitability of
Siberia, Central Asia, etc., for colonisation, it is necessary to
allot supplementary lands to the peasantry. This means that there would be
no need to hurry with the latifundia, but for the lack of land. Marxists
have to argue quite differently: so long as the latifundia are not
abolished, a rapid development of the productive forces is impossible,
either in the centre or in the colonies (in Russia’s borderlands). —Lenin

[3]An amendment proposing to replace the words “placed at the disposal”
by the words “made the private property” was rejected at Stockholm by
the Mensheviks. (Minutes, p. 152.) —Lenin

[8]M. Shanin in his pamphlet, Municipalisation or Division for Private
Property (Vilna, 1907), underlined that aspect of the question which
bears on agriculture, but did not understand the two paths of development
and the importance of abolishing the present landowning system. —Lenin

[11]See, for example, Das Kapital, III, 2. T., S. 346-47, on the
price of land as a barrier to the development of capitalism; and Ibid.,
S. 344-45, 341, 342.[26] —Lenin

[12]In a capitalist state private property in land and nationalisation
cannot exist side by side. One of them must gain the upper
hand. The business of the workers’ party is to fight for the higher system.
—Lenin

[13]The Peasant Question and Social-Democracy. A particularly
vague commentary on the Menshevik programme. See p. 66. On p. 103 this
wretched defender of municipalisation points to nationalisation as
the best way out! —Lenin

[14]The Autoabstract The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the
Russian Revolution is a brief summary of the book The Agrarian
Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905-07
(see present edition, Vol. 13, p. 217-431). Lenin wrote the Autoabstract in
order to acquaint the Polish Social-Democrats with the differences of
opinion existing in the R.S.D.L.P. on the agrarian question. It was
published in the journal Przeglad Socjaldemokratyczny, No. 6,
August 1908.

[16]Vendée—a department in western France where the
backward peasantry began a counter-revolutionary uprising against the
republic at the close of the eighteenth century, during the French
bourgeois revolution. The uprising was led by the Catholic clergy, the
nobility and émigré royalists, and had the support of
England.

Vendée became a synonym for reactionary rebellion and hot-beds
of counter-revolution.

[18]Obrazovaniye (Education)—a literary,
popular-scientific, and socio-political monthly published in St. Petersburg
from 1892 to 1909. There were Social-Democrats among its contributors
between 1902 and 1908.

[20]Zarya (Dawn)—a Marxist scientific and political
journal published in Stuttgart in 1901-02 by the Iskra editorial
board. Four issues appeared in all.

Zarya published Lenin’s writings: “Casual Notes”,
“The Persecutors of the Zemstvo and the Hannibals of Liberalism”, the
first four chapters of “The Agrarian Question and ‘the Critics of Marx’"
(under the title “Messrs. the ‘Critics’ on the Agrarian Question”),
“Review of Home Affairs”, and “The Agrarian Programme of Russian
Social-Democracy”.

[21]Zhizn (Life)—a monthly journal published in
St. Petersburg from 1897 to 1901 and abroad in 1902. From 1899 the journal
was the organ of the “legal Marxists”.